What our home pages are really saying (a dialog)

Imagine a website could talk. Here is what most of the conversations would be like.

Often when I’m designing I try to imagine a screen interaction as a face-to-face dialog between two people. Specifically, I try to imagine that the person visiting or using the screen is trying to have a conversation with a person representing the website or software the screen is part of. Of course, real-life conversation is by its nature reactive…we can instantly respond to a direct question and generally structure our responses based on where the conversation is going. When we design, we don’t have this luxury, and so we are left with designing a one-sided static conversation. This is hard!…and the results are often stilted and not at all like a real human conversation.

In the conversation below I imagine what it would be like to talk to most home pages…you know the ones…with the giant “Sign Up” button that commands your attention above all else.